CBI trapped in a blind alley in Bofors case

George Iype in New Delhi

Two months after the Swiss government handed over the secret bank documents containing the names of the recipients of bribes from the Swedish arms manufacturer A B Bofors, an early breakthrough in the controversial Bofors payoffs case seems to elude India's Central Bureau of Investigation.

The Special Investigation Team, constituted by CBI Director Joginder Singh to probe the US $ 1.3 billion gun scandal, has questioned a number of former army generals and bureaucrats these past weeks, without much success.

CBI sources said the agency's inability to bring the guilty to book is due to the lack of effective extradition treaties with countries like Dubai and Malaysia.

"Our efforts so far have been futile because India does not have extradition treaties with countries like Dubai and Malaysia," a senior CBI officer told Rediff On The NeT.

The SIT, he disclosed, is now busy redrafting documents to suit Malaysian legal requirements to get Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi -- one of the alleged recepients of the Bofors bribes -- extradited to India.

''The Bureau does not think that nabbing Quattrocchi is an immediate possibility," the CBI officer added.

The SIT, comprising some of the agency's top sleuths, suffered a major setback last month when the Malaysian government refused to execute a warrant from a New Delhi court for Quattrocchi's arrest.

Quattrocchi, formerly the India representative of the Italian transnational company SnamProgetti, has lived in Kuala Lumpur since 1993 after it was revealed by the Swiss authorities that he was one of those who had sought to block the passage of the bank documents to India.

After SIT chief Revanna Siddhaiah and his colleague N R Wassan returned empty-handed from Kuala Lumpur, the CBI has been engaged in redrafting the documents in consultation with some senior Indian lawyers to meet Malaysia's legal requirements.

Though Interpol sounded a red-corner alert across the world for Quattrocchi's arrest, CBI officials believe the Malaysian government chose to ignore this because of the Italian's clout.

The authorities in Dubai have also chosen to ignore a red corner alert for the arrest of former Bofors agent Win Chadha who has lived in the United Arab Emirates for several years now.

Though the case for issuing an arrest warrant for Chadha will come up before the Supreme Court shortly, CBI officers are not optimistic about a positive outcome from the Dubai authorities.

The CBI has also not met with success in following several other leads in the Bofors case.

The agency has not been able to complete the procedure for sending letters rogatories to a number of tax havens like Panama, the Channel Islands, Man of Isle and Liechenstein, where the payoff funds travelled from the coded Swiss bank accounts.

Meanwhile, it was revealed in Parliament on Monday that the federal government has so far spent more than Rs 8 million, mostly in foreign exchange, on investigating the Bofors scandal.

According to government records submitted in the ongoing Budget session of Parliament, the foreign exchange spent on the investigations amounted to as much as Rs 6.8 million including about Rs 3 million in dollars.

Parliamentary records also reveal that MPs have discussed the Bofors issue in the Lok Sabha for more than 60 hours in the last ten years while the Joint Parliamentary Committee, which probed the scandal in 1987-1988, spent 140 hours discussing the subject.